Take my hand (and take a breath)
by SeveningTree
Summary: It wasn't just the lingering glances, the hand-holding, the finishing-each-others-sentences, the laughs they shared, the time they took to spend together, the flirty one-liners. It wasn't just that. It was the fact that Barry Allen and Caitlin Snow had unknowingly, so naturally, moved on from their past, towards each other.


_A/N: Honestly, I knew I was doomed the moment I saw how Barry Allen looked at Caitlin Snow. Their chemistry is flawless and so beautifully subtle yet evident in the little moments between them. I'm going down with this ship, I just know it (especially considering that they may not ever happen, but I'm secretly an optimist so I'll keep my hopes up for as long as the show goes). This fic was basically inevitable._

_Some pre-warnings: I did my best to keep the characters as true to themselves as possible, but I'm taking liberties with the storyline here. And of course, the characters aren't mine. It's my first time writing them, so I tried. Enjoy._

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_.._

**_Take my hand (and take a breath)_**

_.._

He had a suggestion one day, and she thought it was a ridiculous one.

"You want to go to _where_?" she asked incredulously.

He grinned. "Think of it as a road trip. A short one. It won't be long, I promise. Just downtown to Vegas."

"Barry, I can't just leave like this. Cisco – Dr Wells—"

"We won't be gone long, just a short while! My birthday is coming up and Iris is away on some journalism trip and besides she's kind of engaged now so I can't just whisk her away from her fiancée and I'm definitely not going to go out with Joe even though he's like a dad to me, and my dad is resting up at home after his check up at hospital and I wanted to stay with him but he asked me to go out and have a bit of fun, and I want Cisco to come but he's suddenly got this extremely important item he wanted to research on because I think Felicity may have sent him something to investigate for her, and Dr Wells – of course not – and you—"

"Are you saying you're out of _friends_?" she summed up, a little smile playing on her features.

He rolled his eyes. "Of course _not_. I just, I need someone to come with me. Going alone is no fun. I promise I'll make sure you don't get drunk. Although, we did have _quite _a bit of fun that one time…"

She looked pointedly at him and he snickered cheekily. "Just one night, Caitlin? Zooming there and back in no time."

All it took was one sigh and nod from her, and he picked her up bridal-style, the both of them disappearing with the wind.

"Wait, we're not in Vegas," she said, opening her eyes. (she really could not stand the super speed for extreme lengths of time – it made her feel like throwing up)

He held her hand for her to get up. "No, we're not," he answered, smiling.

They were in New York, sitting on the shoulder of the Statue of Liberty.

"Barry! What _are we doing _up here?" she questioned, eyes wide and mouth agape, taking in the height of their surroundings and the brilliant lights of the New York skyline. "We could have just sat _inside_."

"Where's the fun in that?" he asked, grinning again. "I promise you'll be fine. I'm here, remember?"

She gave him a small smile. "It is beautiful up here. I thought you wanted to party and have fun celebrating adding another number to your age."

He smiled. "Well, I thought it'd be nicer to have something quiet this year. Ever since I've become The Flash, I realised things in my life were getting faster and faster. I wanted a break – to remember how far I've come and to reflect a little."

"And?" she asked.

"And I figured you'd be the best person to do that with. You know, so in case something goes wrong with me, you'd be able to fix me up immediately."

She elbowed him, and he laughed, "Oh! I never thought you'd do that. Not when we're up this high."

"Well, I'd take my chances. Whenever my life needed saving, you were always there first anyway. And you were never late, no matter how often you were tardy in real life," she said, her genuine words making him warm inside.

He smiled at her then, a look on his face that said more than he could ever express verbally. She almost felt as though he looked at her like he loved her as someone more than just his personal physician, his teammate or his friend. Just for one quick moment, she thought she saw something more, but she crossed it off – it couldn't be possible, not when there were so many other girls competing for his affections, not even with Iris West engaged to someone else.

"You know I'll always be there, but you sell yourself short, Doctor Snow," he responded, his voice gentle and soft. "You've always been there for me too."

She smiled and he put an arm around her, giving her a half-hug.

It was his first birthday since he'd become The Flash, and it was one of the best ones he could remember. He didn't think he'd spend it with just Caitlin Snow, but somehow she understood him, and he enjoyed his conversations with her.

Every year since then, he'd spend one day close to his birthday with her, just the two of them. She was almost his best friend now – though no one could replace Iris West for him, and no one could replace Ronnie Raymond for her, they found something special in each other – a connection they shared in their history, their pain, and their joys.

Years passed, and with every metahuman villain defeated, and every obstacle overcome, life became nearly just a routine for them with nothing unusual, nothing unexplainable anymore.

Not until the unstoppable force of time and old age revealed its wrath.

When he zoomed back into the lab one day, not wrecked up in blisters and burning scars, but in tears, she knew instantly that there was something very, very wrong. This was not the Barry Allen she knew. Jovial, reckless, adorable, hopeful Barry Allen.

He was grateful that it was only her, and no one else. He wouldn't dare admit it, but his pride would not allow anyone else to see him that way, not anyone except his dad, and Joe. And now, Caitlin Snow. She held his head in her arms, and he cried, still wearing his superhero suit but looking far from it. It was a sad and lonely melancholy drifting through his soul, and she was his anchor to sanity.

This time, it wasn't just anything – not even Iris West getting married could make him be like this. His father, his only living relative – passed away. It wasn't a metahuman causing chaos, nothing of the sort. It was just him, growing old and having a stroke he never thought he would have.

It wrecked Barry to his core. He attended the funeral, but after that, he was just _gone._ She searched for him, almost pointlessly – and it bore no fruit. She cried her eyes out many nights alone at S.T.A.R. Labs, wishing with all her might that he would zoom in, ruffle her hair and return as the kind-hearted, stupidly handsome and amazingly fast human being he was. But he never did. Cisco did his own research, doing everything possible to find his good friend – and he realised that Barry just did not want to be found – but he kept trying regardless.

It was exactly two hundred and seventy seven days before he zoomed back into Central City – and it was only because Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak finally found him and brought to him the news that Caitlin Snow was in the ICU, hit by an icy explosion started by a researcher at a university she was visiting.

He never thought he'd ever be too late to save her. He kicked himself for letting go of Caitlin Snow – he should have never let go of her. He lost his chance with Iris, and that was him being slow; but with Caitlin, he always had the opportunity, he always had the chance to be the man whom he could not be around just anyone else. She knew who he was, from the very beginning. She knew him better than anyone in the entire universe, more than Iris ever knew now. But he let her go, and it was almost too late.

She looked so blue, and he was so afraid. Her lips were a dark brown and her usually vibrant ivory skin was a whitish grey, so much alike frosted ice covering an entire person's body.

"I'm so sorry, Caitlin," he breathed in between sobs, tears streaming down his bloodshot eyes. "I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry I wasn't on time this time. I'm sorry, _I'm so so sorry_."

When she woke up two months later, colour finally returning to her face, he was there, holding her hand, his blue irises continually focused on her. He pulled her into a hug so tight that she almost choked, particularly because she _just woke up_ from a coma.

Everyone in the room left and gave them some time, because they _knew_ – everyone knew. It was so plain to see, so obvious throughout the years and years they had spent together. It wasn't just the lingering glances, the hand-holding, the finishing-each-others-sentences, the laughs they shared, the time they took to spend together, the flirty one-liners. It wasn't just that.

It was the fact that Barry Allen and Caitlin Snow had unknowingly, so naturally, moved on from their past, towards each other. Iris had known for a long time, and advised him to do something before he repeated the same mistake – but the stubborn guy didn't listen. Cisco had harped on Caitlin to tell Barry for years on end, since he noticed that they were spending increasingly more time on their own, without him (and yes he was initially a bit hurt but once he realised something _else _was going on, he was happy to play matchmaker, in the most amusing and hilarious of ways).

She smacked him across the face after she regained some strength, and rightfully so – he knew he fully deserved it. He would take that slap and more if only he knew for certain that she felt for him just as he did for her.

"You're as blind as a bat even though you're the fastest man alive," Cisco remarked, another month after Caitlin had woken up. "_She LOVES YOU._"

"And I'm supposed to spring this on her? The instant she wakes up from a two-month coma?" Barry replied, hands in the air.

"You adorable dummy, just DO SOMETHING already! Do us all a favour and speed things up before something else devastating happens again," Felicity warned him, giving him a hearty clap on his back.

"Speed things up. Funny," Barry said, heaving out a nervous sigh.

He zoomed over to her apartment that night, deciding that it would be now or never. She opened the door, surprised to find him there but not upset at him for showing up (her anger at him took time to dissipate, but they were at a stage where she had finally decided to slowly forgive him for abandoning her).

"What are you doing?" he asked, looking at the unusual mess her living room was in.

That was when he noticed the large cardboard boxes.

"Are you _moving out_? Or _away?_" he asked, shock forming on his face.

"No, relax, I'm not," she said. "I'm just keeping away some old things."

"Oh gosh, you scared me," he automatically responded.

She looked at him. "Why? What's wrong if I move away?"

"Caitlin, you can't now—"

"And why not? You left, too, and it was your own decision to make," she challenged, and it gutted him there and then.

"I made a huge mistake, I'm sorry, you know that—"

"Yes, but you _left, _Barry. You left all of us."

"And like I said, I'm _so sorry_, Caitlin. There's not a day that goes by that I don't regret what I did."

"I'm not asking you to beat yourself up, Barry, and I have forgiven you, but if I were to leave, I don't see what difference it would make. Everything's changed now."

"No, it hasn't," he said, and he walked up to her and held her hand in both of his. "Are you saying we're not friends anymore? That everything we've shared is just forgotten?"

She looked at him, tears welling in her eyes. "Barry Allen, you will always be my friend, but even friends take time to patch themselves up."

It took another three months and an accident which almost cost him his life (yet again), before Caitlin returned to her former self, worriedly rushing over to Barry and making sure he was going to live.

Finally, one night when it was all quiet at S.T.A.R. Labs, and it was just the two of them, he asked her the same question he had asked her almost a decade ago.

"Okay," she said. "It has been a very long time since we've been here."

"That it has," he agreed, and they smiled at each other, for the first time in a very long time.

He bumped against her shoulder and she bumped back into his. "I'm glad we're friends again," she said, her honesty refreshing and perfect.

"So am I," he said, smiling. "But firstly, I want to acknowledge again for the umpteenth time that I'm a first class idiot."

"Okay, and…?" she said, her upturned corners of her lips finally returning, her beautiful smile lighting up his world.

"And I'm not going to be an idiot any longer," he finished.

She gave him a puzzled look, her dark curls flowing lightly in the breeze, and she looked so adorable when she was confused. He took both her hands in his, and one hand reached up to caress her face, and in that one instant, he knew that everything, _everything _would be fine as long as she was by his side.

For once, this chemistry, this bond he shared with Caitlin Snow, did not need to be explained. He did not need to test it, do experiments with it, research it, or try to give a scientific explanation for it. No – because all he needed to know was this feeling, deep within his heart and soul, that he _loved her so much_, and that he _wanted her_, not just for now, but for forever; and that he _never wanted to lose her again._

When Barry Allen was very nervous, he would usually go on a train wreck of blabbering sentences trying to accurately express what was in his mind. His heart was beating at hundreds of miles an hour, but somehow, he found the strength and courage to finally say what he wanted to say for an extremely unprecedented amount of time.

"I _love you_, Cait. And it's not in that way which is just friends. I want you in my life, forever. I am an idiot for waiting this long to say this to you, and for all the things I put us through. But I _love you, I love you so much. _And I will do everything in my power to prove to you that I will keep my promise – I will never leave you again. I'm not a hero without you. And I know you don't want a hero, so I'll be just be _yours_–"

That was all she needed to hear before she closed the small gap between them, pressing her lips to his in a moment that would be encapsulated in their visual memory for eternity.

When they parted after a soft, lingering kiss, she whispered just enough to make his spirits soar. "I've always loved you, Barry. Always."

He smiled, and then he went kissing her again and again, joy overflowing. She laughed softly in between kisses, her arms around his neck and his arms wrapped firmly around her upper abdomen.

"I'm sorry I took so long," he finally said, taking a breath, relishing the feel of her in his arms.

She smiled caringly at him. "It's not just your fault," she admitted with a happy (exhilarated) sigh.

He chuckled. "We are quite the pair, Doctor Snow."

"Yes we are, Mr Allen."

And then they kissed, passionately, desperately, because they had a lot of lost time to make up for. And they continued that way, rewriting history over and over again.

One thing was for sure: he was _hers_, and she was _his_, and they were _forever._

_.._

**_end._**

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_Please review? And thanks for reading!_


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